


Rumour Has It

by linguamortua



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Gossip, Racism, SHIELD douchebros, Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 23:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5069218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria at work and Maria at home are two very different people, a fact which causes much confusion at SHIELD when she starts spending a lot of time with Sam Wilson. In which: SHIELD bros are terrible, Maria loves food and ex-military cynicism in alive and well in DC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rumour Has It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asterion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asterion/gifts).



> Based on a prompt from [dingo](http://dingo-in-a-domino-mask.tumblr.com): 'Sam interacting with Maria Hill, cuz I have literally never seen that happen. Include the phrase "but that's just what I've heard."'.

‘I heard they’re sleeping together,’ said the rookie agent, cupping her hands around her thin, cafeteria coffee and leaning in to address the table. On her left, another rookie scoffed.

‘That’s so _obvious_ ,’ he said. He was shovelling down his lunch, talking with his mouth full. ‘If they were, they’d both be way more subtle about it. Hill especially.’

‘Yeah,’ added another woman, skinny and sallow and with a silver caduceus on her black SHIELD shirt. ‘I’ve been here six years and she’s never been known to be involved with anyone. I think she’s more likely to be gay than anything else.’

‘Or just a cold fish,’ agreed the man through a mouthful of anaemic-looking lamb. Somebody kicked him under the table and he glared around, cheeks bulging with food.

‘Coulson,’ said the first woman, sat opposite him with a good view of the door. ‘Zip it.’ The conversation segued awkwardly away from Hill.

*

Maria stretched in bed and groaned.

‘Now?’ she said. ‘You want to talk about this now?’ Sam’s chuckle was warm down the phone.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know, but I was up for an early run and it kinda hit me mid-lap.’

‘Okay, I’m up. I’m getting up. Let me get coffee and call you back, you cheerful bastard.’

Maria stood by the kitchen counter, staring blindly through the coffeemaker while it whirred and spluttered vanilla coffee into her waiting mug. She stirred in cream and rested the spoon over the side of the sink, ready for the inevitable second cup.

‘All right,’ she said, comfortably installed in front the window in her low-slung Eames armchair. She could see the sun coming up over the river. ‘Amaze me with this great idea.’

‘We don’t make it a veterans' aid thing. We scrap that angle. We sell it as, you know, a cultural diversity initiative.’ Maria snickered. ‘Spearheaded by two experts, marginalised persons, blah blah blah.’

‘Spearheaded sounds so _phallic_ ,’ Maria drawled.

‘Hatched from the ovum of two experts…’

‘Better.’ Maria considered. They’d been trying to find some way to fold vets into the SHIELD architecture - some way to match well-prepared ex-military personnel with the manpower-hungry engine of a government agency. So far, gentle enquiries had been fruitless. The whole system was set up for civil servants, who sneered at less academic skillsets: SHIELD was too delicate, veterans too volatile. Volatile, as if Stark or Rogers or Thor’s asshole baby brother were somehow stable, or controllable. ‘It could work,’ she said. ‘It feels a bit like bullshit…’

‘... but convincing bullshit,’ Sam finished.

‘Government bullshit. We could keep you out of the formal chain of command that way, too. Waste some government dollars and pay you as a consultant instead. A diversity consultant.’

‘Everybody wins. You guys get your staff, we get some folk in work, I get my sweet paycheque.’

‘You laugh, but the Hydra business hit us hard. It wasn’t just the personnel purge. We were hemorrhaging recruits for a while. Took a year to see any kind of stabilisation in incoming recruiting numbers. We might manage to be only twenty percent understaffed this year overall - _might_ \- but half our personnel will be low-clearance new kids.’ She rubbed at her eyes, still a little tired; always a little tired, these days.

‘You don’t have to fix it all, Maria.’

‘Recruitment got handed to me. It’s kind of my job to fix it.’ Dumped on her. It had been dumped on her, as if she wasn’t a field agent, a handler and damn near the most experienced mission lead they had after Coulson. ‘I’m practically HR now.’ She heard the bitterness creeping back into her voice and tried to rally. ‘Well, temporarily.’

‘Temporarily,’ agreed Sam. ‘And when you’re done, you’ll have the right people for the job. We serve, you know? Sometimes we don’t get to choose what that looks like.’

‘God damn.’ Maria finished her coffee and swirled the dregs around. ‘You’re right, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘And, I should look on the bright side. We might actually be able to do some good here. Repair some public image, too, so maybe I won’t have the politicos breathing down my neck. Pitch it, Sam. Write me a proper proposal and I’ll shove it through, if I have to break fingers to do it.’

‘Roger that,’ said Sam, and they ended the call. Maria pulled a suit out of her closet. It was 6am.

*

‘He’s basically a glorified paramedic, if you ask me.’

‘With a bunch of jumps to his name, though.’

‘Yeah, but everyone goes through that training. He doesn’t seem like that big a deal to me.’

‘Cap thinks he’s worth a spot on the team.’

‘Cap probably can’t get over the wings.’

‘The wings are pretty great.’

‘Give me a fucking break. Next you’ll be jerking off over Iron Man. The guy got lucky, okay? There’s any number of us could fly with those wings. The wings do the work. Cap’s just amazed by the technology.’

‘I probably couldn’t do what he does.’

‘I could. Hundred bucks says I could.’

‘Okay, big shot, let me know when you get a spare EXO-7. I’ll come outside and watch you eat asphalt.’

‘Come on, though. You know there’s some guys here who’d have made the Falcon program. What’s Wilson got that they don’t?’

‘He had a good military record.’

‘Him and like twenty eight thousand other guys. Look, he’s here because it makes everyone look good.’

‘Like how?’

‘Like, he’s a black kid, single mom, no college.’

‘That’s kinda… I’m not really comfortable…’

‘Don’t give me that PC bullshit. Anyone could do it, they picked the guy who made for good PR.’

*

‘That’s another thing I don’t miss about the Army.’

‘You’re soft, woman.’

‘I _am_ soft. I fucking hated Basic.’ Maria adopted a childish whine. ‘My feet hurt. This food is nasty. My pack smells funny. I don’t like running. I want to go home. Literally me.’

‘Why’d you sign up?’ Sam reached up lazily to snatch at a hanging leaf, fall-red and clinging precariously to a branch. He handed to Maria with a mock bow and she tucked it behind her ear. It blazed against her dark hair.

‘Didn’t know what else to do. I was passable at all my school subjects but not really great at anything. My dad was Army, seemed like a reasonable bet. See the world, learn a skill and all that. What about you?’

‘Poor kid,’ said Sam succinctly. ‘But, you know, I liked the people.’ Maria laughed. ‘No, seriously. I liked the guys, people having my back, having a place in the world. That carried me through the first tour.'

‘You were glad to leave, though.’

‘I was glad to leave.’ Nothing needed to be said, after that; Riley had been an early conversation, like Maria’s mother. ‘You were recruited out, right?’

‘By Phil - by Coulson. I was working in logistics and he saw something he could work with, I guess.’

‘And you were glad to leave?’

‘Hell yeah.’ Maria was emphatic. ‘SHIELD’s not perfect, nowhere near, but there’s less macho bullshit. And I didn’t start at the bottom, so anyone gives me shit and I’ve got the power to deal with them. People still don’t _like_ me, but…’ she shrugged and trailed off.

‘They respect you.’

‘Sometimes. Not the same thing, though.’

‘Too cold?’

‘Too cold. Maria Hill, professional bitch.’ The wind blows and the leaf falls from her hair, spiralling away across the park. ‘And no goddamn cold showers.’

*

‘Wilson’s trying to get a foot in the door,’ shrugged the admin, flipping her hair. ‘It’s obvious.’

‘Not to me.’ Two agents perched one on either side of her desk, like attentive dogs. The one on the left, dark-haired and movie star-attractive, leaned in with a smile.

‘Well, like, he’s not SHIELD but he’s in with Cap and the others. Which makes him almost an Avenger, or something, but he needs formal clearance.’ She shuffled papers on her desk self-importantly. ‘That’s really hard to get. Like, the _government_ has to approve it. It’s a big deal. Basically the only people who can move the paperwork through are Coulson and Hill.’

‘He’s buttering up Hill? I would have thought Coulson would be easier.’

‘Yeah, but he’s hardly here these days.’

‘Can’t imagine Hill doing anyone any favours.’ That was the second agent, blonde and boyish with a freckled nose.

‘Well,’ said the admin, leaning in. ‘It’s not like she can be picky. It’s not like she dates.’

‘Not like you?’ said the blond man with what was apparently supposed to be a winning smile.

‘Not like me,’ said the admin, and smiled back, a little smudge of pink lipstick on her teeth.

*

‘This is so good,’ said Maria, barbecue sauce running down her chin. Steve stared across the table at her, half awed and half intimidated. The burger was mostly gone already. Steve still had most of his on the plate. He did this cute thing where he deliberately ate slowly, even though he ploughed through twice as much as anyone else and sometimes more. He’d already finished most of the side dishes. At the end of the table, Sam was steadily demolishing a pile of ribs.

‘I told you,’ Sam said. ‘I _told_ you, but nobody listens to me.’

‘It looked like a dive from outside!’ Maria protested with her mouth full. And it did - a shabby little green-painted door, and a rickety sign proclaiming GRATE AMERICAN HOME COOKING. They knew Sam by name here. It was cheap. The portions were huge.

‘You could swallow it first,’ murmured Steve, disappearing a bowl of coleslaw.

‘Buzzkill,’ retorted Maria. She leaned back in her seat and groaned, stomach distended.

‘Amateur hour,’ said Sam. ‘I bet you’re not even going to try dessert. They do this key lime pie...’

‘No, I am, I am, just let me finish this beer and sit.’

‘It’s the desk job,’ Sam said to Steve in a stage whisper. ‘She should come running with us.’

‘I’d rather throw myself into the Potomac, you sick fucks. I haven’t run in months.’

Sam dropped the last bone onto his plate and sat back with a happy sigh.

‘Hey, Hill, let’s retire and set up a restaurant.’

‘Okay. Can you cook?’

‘Can I cook? Can Momma Wilson’s boy cook? Don’t insult me. I’m a great cook.’

‘He can make pancakes,’ supplied Steve, helpfully.

‘Maria and Sam’s Pancake Shack,’ said Maria.

‘Sam and Maria’s has a better ring to it,’ protested Sam. ‘You can be front of house, with your winning personality and love of people.’

‘Call it,’ began Steve, already starting to laugh at his own joke in that singular way he had. ‘Call it _Wings and Tits_.’

‘Jesus,’ Sam said, sinking his face into his palm.

‘Honest to God,’ said Maria, ‘I do you two idiots _such_ a favour, being friends with you.’

 


End file.
